The Last Tudor Read online

  My stepgrandmother sends me one letter with a Christmas gift of a gold cup and tells me the news. She writes carefully, so that no spy can claim that she is conspiring with me.

  I have happy news of Ned Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, she writes, avoiding reiterating any claim that he is my brother-in-law. He has been released from imprisonment and is able to live freely at his home in Wiltshire, Wulf Hall. His sons, Teddy and Thomas, remain with their grandmother at Hanworth, but they can write to their father, and they may write and receive letters from you. I know this will give you great joy.

  I pause in my reading and think of my little nephews, Katherine’s sons, and of their father still parted from them, but able at least to write to each other. Truly, Elizabeth has become a monstrously powerful queen. We are all placed only where she will allow us to be.

  My stepgrandmother makes it clear that the inquiry that was to examine the treason of Mary Queen of Scots’ wicked half brother has been turned around completely. Lord Moray has supplied the inquiry with a casket of letters that are said to prove that the queen was her husband’s murderer, and Bothwell’s adulterous lover. It is not the treasonous half brother but the queen herself who is on trial—as Elizabeth swore she would never be.

  The letters do not all appear to be in her true handwriting, my stepgrandmother tactfully explains. So some people doubt they are hers.

  I am very sure of this. I imagine that William Cecil’s spies are cutting and copying letters like good children bent over their schoolbooks in a frenzy of forgery. But in any case, Elizabeth lacks the courage to come to a definite conclusion and we enter the new year with the Scots queen and me in confinement in our separate prisons, me at Grimsthorpe, she at Bolton Castle, dressed in her royal finery, which she insisted was sent on from Lochleven, both of us hoping for our freedom with the spring.

  She does more than hope: she writes to Philip II of Spain, claiming that she is being held, without cause, by Elizabeth. This may gain her freedom, but will certainly win her the absolute enmity of William Cecil and all Protestants. Unlike her, I have no one to write to. My only royal kinswoman is my only enemy: Elizabeth.

  GRIMSTHORPE CASTLE,

  LINCOLNSHIRE, SPRING 1569

  I can hardly believe that the day has come, but it is spring, the land is unlocked from winter, the streams are running alongside the lane, and both my imprisoned cousin Mary Queen of Scots and I are to be freed. The season that has always called to me in the singing birds is the season that will see me walk free. Queen Mary is to return to Scotland and take up her throne. The inquiry against her has collapsed, and Elizabeth knows she cannot keep her royal cousin locked up with no good reason. She is not even going to keep me locked up, and I don’t have Philip II and the Catholic kings advocating for me. It is as if Elizabeth has looked into the horror that she was making, seen the road she was walking. If she proved the case against her cousin Mary, she would have had to execute her. If she continued to imprison me indefinitely, what is it but a death sentence? Changeable, fearful, Elizabeth turns from persecuting her heirs to setting us free in the hope that Mary in Edinburgh and I far away will trouble her less than when she holds us captive.

  “You are to go to Sir Thomas Gresham,” my stepgrandmother says. “I shall miss you, my dear, but I shall be glad to know that you are staying in London, and when there is next a vacancy at court, you will become a lady-in-waiting. You will return to your former place.”

  “She thinks that I will return to serve her?” I ask incredulously.

  My stepgrandmother laughs. “You will. It is the best way to demonstrate that you are no danger to her, you are no rival. Remember her own sister imprisoned her and then called her to court. She thinks she can do the same with you.”

  “But I will be free?”

  “You will be free.”

  I take her hands. “I will never forget that you took me in,” I tell her.

  “That was nothing,” she says wryly. “Don’t forget that I took the damned monkey, too.”

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, SUMMER 1569

  I ride to London through the richest lands of England. On either side of the track the hayfields have been freshly mown, and I can smell the dizzying smell of green hay. On the hills beyond the fields the sheep are flocking with their fat lambs under the careless supervision of the shepherd boys. In the water meadows beside the river the cows are grazing on the lush grass, and when we ride past them in the evening we see the girls going out with their pails on yokes, carrying their milking stools.

  I am so happy to be on horseback that I don’t want the journey to end, but before long we go through the Bishopsgate and there is the beautiful large house built by Sir Thomas, using the fortune he has earned by advising my family, the Tudors, how to do business. It was Sir Thomas who warned the queen that she must recall the bad currency and issue good, it was Sir Thomas who lived at Antwerp and guarded the interests of the English merchants against our greatest trading partner, and it was Sir Thomas who advised the building of a great hall in London where merchants could meet and exchange news, confirm the licenses and monopolies, and buy into each other’s companies.

  We draw up outside his handsome London house, almost a palace in size, and his servants in his livery throw open the double doors and I walk in. There is no one there to greet me but the steward of his household, who bows to me and offers to show me to my rooms.

  “Where is Sir Thomas?” I ask, stripping off my riding gloves and handing them to my lady-in-waiting. “And Lady Gresham?”

  “Sir Thomas is ill, he has taken to his chamber, and Lady Gresham has gone out,” he says, clearly embarrassed at their neglect of their duty and their lack of respect to me.

  “Then you had better take me to my rooms and tell Lady Gresham that she may attend on me as soon as she returns,” I say sharply.

  I follow him up the great staircase and he leads me past several big double doors to a single door, set in the corner of the building. He opens it. I go in. It is not a box as I endured at Chequers, but it is not a great handsome room to match the imposing house. It is a privy chamber without a presence chamber, and it is clear that I am not to live here as a princess with my own little court.

  Beyond it is a bedroom with a good-sized bed and an oriel window over the noisy street below so that I can watch like a nosy merchant’s wife and see Sir Thomas’s tradesmen coming and going, and the clerks going into their counting houses.

  “We were told it would not be for long,” the steward says apologetically. “We were told that you are going to court.”

  “I believe so, and this will do for the time being, if you have nothing better,” I say coolly. “Please show my lady-in-waiting and my maids to their rooms. And you may bring some wine and water and something to eat. You may serve it in the chamber outside, my privy chamber.”

  He bows himself out and I look around me. It is pleasant enough—God knows, it is a thousand times better than the Tower—and it is good enough until I get back to court.

  The happiest, best thing that might happen to me has occurred: a great good in itself, and a harbinger of happiness to come. I cannot even think of it without wanting to drop to my knees and thank God for mercy. My husband, my beloved husband Thomas Keyes, has survived the cold and the hunger and the cramped quarters of the worst prison in England, and finally been released. I get the news in a note from him, himself, the first I have received since we were parted with one kiss, with our farewell kiss. This is the first note that he has ever written me. I know that he is no great scholar and it is not easy for him to express himself in writing, so I treasure the scrap of paper and the careful script. This is better than a poem, better than a ballad, these are the true words of an honest man, my honest man.

  I am to go to Sandgate Castle in my home county of Kent where I was once captain so I know it is a snug billet and I am glad with all my heart to be freed. I pray for you and for your freedom daily and that you